Saturday, August 29, 2009
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Some info about where I'm going
Well, I'm leaving the country on Friday. I'll be flying to Chicago, then Hong Kong for a brief stop, then a layover in Singapore for the night before finally flying to Jakarta in the morning.
Here's what the country looks like (click to enlarge and see the whole thing):
Indonesia is made up of about 6000 inhabited islands. Jakarta is on the island of Java, in the Southwest corner of the country. After the month or so of orientation, I will move on to Manado, where I'll be living and teaching at a public high school. Manado is on the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi, which is the funny shaped island right in the middle.
Here's a close-up (see Manado in the top right corner?):
Sulawesi is home to some unique animals:
the babirusa (there's a baby babirusa at the St. Louis zoo right now--it is very cute)
the Celebes macaque
the tarsier, which is the smallest monkey there is, I believe
(to mention a few)
The city of Manado is right on the ocean, and the area is famous for snorkeling and scuba diving...
Anyway, I'm going now to work on packing, so check back here later, and I'll keep you updated on my trip!
Here's what the country looks like (click to enlarge and see the whole thing):
Indonesia is made up of about 6000 inhabited islands. Jakarta is on the island of Java, in the Southwest corner of the country. After the month or so of orientation, I will move on to Manado, where I'll be living and teaching at a public high school. Manado is on the northern tip of the island of Sulawesi, which is the funny shaped island right in the middle.
Here's a close-up (see Manado in the top right corner?):
Sulawesi is home to some unique animals:
the babirusa (there's a baby babirusa at the St. Louis zoo right now--it is very cute)
the Celebes macaque
the tarsier, which is the smallest monkey there is, I believe
(to mention a few)
The city of Manado is right on the ocean, and the area is famous for snorkeling and scuba diving...
Anyway, I'm going now to work on packing, so check back here later, and I'll keep you updated on my trip!
Wednesday, May 27, 2009
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Pergamon theater
Well, yesterday was my birthday, and I had a really good day. We went to an international craft fair, ate waffles and cookies and pastries, and turns out that some student group was hosting a Tim Burton movie marathon last night, so we did that too. Tonight we've got a Halloween party hosted by our friend (a Grinnell grad) who works at the Embassy. So things are going well.
As to other stuff... Well, classes vary from hard (Greek) to easy (History and Linguistics). Eastern Roman Provinces is the most interesting, and I had trouble with the first test, but I feel like I really had the second one under control. I've started having papers due, but it's no big deal so far. Turkish class is plodding along, and the core course is tedious (because of the stuff we have to read), but only once a week.
I don't have any related pictures to show, so here's my favorite spot from our week-long field trip. This is at Pergamon, on the Acropolis. This first picture is just a nice example of the view. Straight ahead, the ground just drops off, and to the right it almost does, because that's where the theater is.
This is a shot of the whole theater. This is just what all the postcards look like. The theater would hold at least 20,000 people. And the view from the seats was great. Since the town center was on top of this huge hill, they didn't have the space for a normal theater, and had to build a steep, narrower theater. It's huge. And absolutely incredible.
This is what I mean by steep. In this picture, I'm standing at the top of the theater, looking down.
Being down at the bottom, looking up at the whole theater, felt really amazing. I got such a great feeling being here, and it was definitely my favorite of all the things we saw.
As to other stuff... Well, classes vary from hard (Greek) to easy (History and Linguistics). Eastern Roman Provinces is the most interesting, and I had trouble with the first test, but I feel like I really had the second one under control. I've started having papers due, but it's no big deal so far. Turkish class is plodding along, and the core course is tedious (because of the stuff we have to read), but only once a week.
I don't have any related pictures to show, so here's my favorite spot from our week-long field trip. This is at Pergamon, on the Acropolis. This first picture is just a nice example of the view. Straight ahead, the ground just drops off, and to the right it almost does, because that's where the theater is.
This is a shot of the whole theater. This is just what all the postcards look like. The theater would hold at least 20,000 people. And the view from the seats was great. Since the town center was on top of this huge hill, they didn't have the space for a normal theater, and had to build a steep, narrower theater. It's huge. And absolutely incredible.
This is what I mean by steep. In this picture, I'm standing at the top of the theater, looking down.
Being down at the bottom, looking up at the whole theater, felt really amazing. I got such a great feeling being here, and it was definitely my favorite of all the things we saw.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
My dad cleaned his apartment.
Just wanted to announce it to the world.
Anyway, I got my pictures off my camera, so here's some interesting highlights of September:
Here I am as Hector, while Britt, as Achilles, drags me three times around the walls of the city. Good thing I'm already dead, because otherwise it would be pretty inconvenient to lie down on the dusty, dusty ground.
Similarly, here I am as Aeneas fleeing the destruction of Troy. My father, Anchises, is on my back, and though you can't tell, I'm leading my son Ascanius by the hand. My wife, Creusa, is right behind... Wait! Where did she go!? Oh no! Creusa!
(to all non-nerds, sorry)
Well, just to complete the set, here's a picture from the Asclepion at Pergamon:
In Athenazde, our Greek book, the son, Philip, gets involved in a fight, is hit, and falls over and somehow results in becoming blind. So Dicaeopolis has no choice but to take him to the priests of Asclepius to hopefully be healed. So here we're re-enacting this process, to commemorate our time in Pergamon.
Less esoteric pictures will follow.
Anyway, I got my pictures off my camera, so here's some interesting highlights of September:
Here I am as Hector, while Britt, as Achilles, drags me three times around the walls of the city. Good thing I'm already dead, because otherwise it would be pretty inconvenient to lie down on the dusty, dusty ground.
Similarly, here I am as Aeneas fleeing the destruction of Troy. My father, Anchises, is on my back, and though you can't tell, I'm leading my son Ascanius by the hand. My wife, Creusa, is right behind... Wait! Where did she go!? Oh no! Creusa!
(to all non-nerds, sorry)
Well, just to complete the set, here's a picture from the Asclepion at Pergamon:
In Athenazde, our Greek book, the son, Philip, gets involved in a fight, is hit, and falls over and somehow results in becoming blind. So Dicaeopolis has no choice but to take him to the priests of Asclepius to hopefully be healed. So here we're re-enacting this process, to commemorate our time in Pergamon.Less esoteric pictures will follow.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
Some interesting pictures
My camera's pictures currently won't upload onto my computer, so I don't have any recent pictures to show. So here's a picture of a large Medusa head used as a column base in the old Byzantine (Justinian, I think) cistern. No one's quite sure why there's these two Medusa heads, or where they came from, or why this one is sideways (and the other one is upside down). We went to the cistern the first full day, same day as the Hippodrome.
Zooming forward in time, here is a picture from the Chora Church, which is famous for its many mosaics and frescoes. This mosaic shows the death of Mary. I thought this was particularly interesting because Jesus is holding a baby in his arms--that baby is actually Mary's soul. Weird, huh? I'm not sure when we went to this museum (church), because apparently I neglected to write about it in my journal. But it was a little later.
For contrast, here's a lovely mosaic that was once part of the floor of the Great (Byzantine) Palace. It depicts two leopards eating a gazelle (I think). There were a lot of fighting scenes in the mosaics: a lion and an elephant, a deer and a snake, and eagle and a snake, a gryphon and... a horse? I think that's what it looks like.Anyway, I hope I figure out the pictures soon, and then I can put up pictures from Troy and Pergama, etc. Until then I'll try to post some more random pictures.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
update
Well, here are some pretty pictures that have nothing to do with right now. This picture, for example, is from one of the Prince's Isles, in the Sea of Marmara.
Right now I'm in my dorm room at Bilkent Universitesi in Ankara. Students are free to arrive anytime now, so I don't know when my roommate will show up. This week we joined in the orientation Turkish class (basically the same stuff as our last Turkish class) and went on a field trip to Ataturk's Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
This is me eating lunch back at Istanbul Teknik. Looks like this meal today is yoghurt soup (gross), schnitzel (with fries), pilav, and kavun (melon).
This next week orientation continues at Bilkent, and our group also starts our own Turkish class and our core class on Turkey.
Here's me and Kelly, who also goes to Grinnell, eating ice cream. Turkish ice cream is very thick, so that they don't do round scoops, they just use a thing more like a shovel to get a flat chunk of ice cream. It's very good, anyway. I'm eating chocolate and banana in this picture.
Of course, they have lots of other ice creams too. They sell cartons in the grocery store, and lots of ice cream bars and stuff sold everywhere.
Right now I'm in my dorm room at Bilkent Universitesi in Ankara. Students are free to arrive anytime now, so I don't know when my roommate will show up. This week we joined in the orientation Turkish class (basically the same stuff as our last Turkish class) and went on a field trip to Ataturk's Mausoleum and the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations.
This is me eating lunch back at Istanbul Teknik. Looks like this meal today is yoghurt soup (gross), schnitzel (with fries), pilav, and kavun (melon).
This next week orientation continues at Bilkent, and our group also starts our own Turkish class and our core class on Turkey.
Here's me and Kelly, who also goes to Grinnell, eating ice cream. Turkish ice cream is very thick, so that they don't do round scoops, they just use a thing more like a shovel to get a flat chunk of ice cream. It's very good, anyway. I'm eating chocolate and banana in this picture.
Of course, they have lots of other ice creams too. They sell cartons in the grocery store, and lots of ice cream bars and stuff sold everywhere.
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